Vincent Larivière holds the Canada Research Chair on the Transformations of Scholarly Communication at Université de Montréal, where he is associate professor of information science. He is also scientific director of the Érudit journal platform, associate scientific director of the Observatoire des Sciences et des Technologies (OST) and regular member of the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST). Over the last 15 years, Vincent’s research has investigated the characteristics of global research systems, determinants of researchers’ scientific activities, as well as the transformations, in the digital world, of the modes of production and dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge. He holds a bachelor’s degree in science, technology and society (UQAM), a master’s degree in history of science (UQAM) and a Ph.D. in information science (McGill), and has been a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University Bloomington.
Resignation of the editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics
Over the last few years, the editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics (JOI) has grown increasingly dissatisfied with Elsevier’s actions and policies. While some of those have specific effects on our field—such as Elsevier’s refusal to participate in the Initiative for Open Citation (I4OC)—others are affecting all fields of science—such as its restrictive open access policies and prohibitive subscription costs. The editorial board of JOI expressed these concerns to Elsevier on numerous occasions, with no success. Given the inability of Elsevier to address these issues, the editorial board unanimous resigned on January 10th 2019. As of January 12th 2019, names of associate editors and editorial board members have been removed from the website of the Journal of Informetrics.
The resignation letter can be found here.
Journals should serve the research community—not the other way around. They provide an exchange forum which can only prosper through the work of authors, reviewers, and editors. Therefore, the former editorial board of the Journal of Informetrics unanimously decided to redirect its labor to a newly created journal, Quantitative Science Studies (QSS), published by MIT Press and owned by the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. I invite all of you to join us in this new endeavor and help us demonstrate how the research community can take control back of its means for disseminating knowledge, in a fair, open, and transparent way. We must all work together in making QSS a success, not only for the field of scientometrics and informetrics, but for science as a whole.
Vincent Larivière
Former Associate Editor, Journal of Informetrics
Interim Editor-in-Chief, Quantitative Science Studies